I was born in
England
and trained as a draughtsman, having always had a pencil in my hand. I
later re-trained as a Technology teacher and emigrated out here to New
Zealand. Here I carried on teaching and pursuing my interest in
competition model aircraft, classic cars, and bikes. When I was 40 years
old I started to play the electric bass and joined a local band for
more than 12 years. This led me to change from model aeroplanes to
designing and building electric stringed instruments. It had been my
intention to retire from teaching and carry on full time as a luthier.

Unfortunately,
I had an accident on the bike that shattered my left wrist. This
required reconstructive surgery, 4 plates, 8 screws, and a bone graft
off the hip, to fix it. The great news is that I can still ride the bike
and do stuff like that. The not so great news is that I have lost the
sensitivity, fine control, and strength that was there previously. No
more working with woodworking power tools! No more sensitive bass riffs!

While
I was off work recovering from the accident I picked up the drawing
instruments and started taking a serious look at the Coruba and Cola
cans that I had held back from the recycler. I have seen pictures of
some very fine model aircraft made from drinks cans but they had the
plain aluminum from the inside of the cans on the outside of the model.
This defeats the purpose of using the drinks can as far as I am
concerned. You want everyone who looks to be able to see instantly what
your basic resource was. Celebrate the fact, don't hide it!

Having
finished the Coruba Climax, and evaluated what I had done, I realised
that changes would have to be made to the next one to make the build
easier and the finished model better looking. Indeed, each subsequent
car has been an improvement upon the last, and until that stops
happening, I'll keep going.

I
hope you get a little something out of looking at my CanCars and perhaps
give building one a go!Sandy